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Showing posts from November, 2013

Crazy bug does crazy good on NatGeo!

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Move over, Jiminy Cricket! If conscience comes in bug form I want mine to be...whatever this thing is. Lucky for me biologist Trond Larsen thought it was pretty spiffy too - he shot a photo of it on an expedition in Suriname and the readers of National Geographic couldn't have been happier. My story Troll Haired Mystery Bug Found in Suriname went crazy-bananans on the web this weekend, with, as of this writing, 1,000 tweets, 48,000 Facebook likes, a reprint in the Huffington Post and a mention by the lovely David Mizejewski on his Animal Planet blog  (David gave me a terrific interview for my NG piece " Do Animals Get Dementia? " and is as charming personally as he is on TV. Thanks, David!). So proud to be on NatGeo and for this tiny bug to have gotten such a big audience. Just one question: When Pixar makes an animated feature out of it who should be the voice? (Bonus points if you vote for me.) Update: 49K. :D

A real good split second

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A new Vietnamese restaurant is moving in down the street from me and when Chas and I drive by we notice their new neon sign is up. It says “PhoK5.” “I agree,” Chas says, “I never liked five.” The next day was as bright as that remark, cool, sunny, perfect for a walk. While passing the new restaurant I noticed that though the Pho K5 sign was up  they hadn’t yet taken down the sign for the restaurant that had been there previously, Medina’s, which had perfect Cuban food and was an Orlando institution. It was great mingling of the past and the present and I ran across the street to shoot a picture, thinking “I have to send this to Tim, he’ll love the old/new mix.” It was one of those thoughts that springs into your head fully formed before reality can come along clobber it: Tim died years before you could just “send” pictures to anyone in a way that didn’t require a stamp. And yet, for a fraction of a second he was not only alive to me but had somehow acquired an iPad and mi

Glow little marine glow worm

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If I could shoot out glowing blue mucus when I was annoyed it would take a Kleenex the size of Ireland to clean up the daily mess. The parchment tube worm has this super power, one about which I got to interview biologist Dmitri Deheyn who is investigating how the worm produces its peculiar bioluminescence which differs from other marine creatres' in several ways. Check it out on NatGeo: Worm's Mysterious Blue Slime Decoded? Dr. Deheyn was a pleasure to interview because he had a great sense of humor and while writing the piece I couldn't get The Glow Worm song out of my head, which turns out to be the most pleasant kind of hypnosis to be under. In case you want to be under it too, click the link below. You won't stop humming it for a week.

New species of fuzzy daisy and other furry flora

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I love when I get to do a NatGeo post somehow based on something I find in (or near) my own backyard. It happened with " Singing Penis, Hearing Feet: Animals that Repurpose Body Parts ," when my Chief Science Officer, Doug Rhodehamel, discovered a water scorpion in our friends' pool and he explained how they breathe through a syphon in their tail. And it happened recently with the story  New species of daisy and other fuzzy flora. That's the daisy in the upper left, discovered in the Venezuelan Andes very recently and a click on the story will give you the skinny on its environment and why it's so fuzzy (and also why it looks a little downcast. It's not. That's just the way the face faces, but it's actually quite a pretty reddish orange color, like a blazing sunset or a dark colored sunflower). The other flora in the story, fuzzy plants from all over the world, had a more domestic start. On the right you'll see something I thought was a Hal

Phallus Mushroom found in Lam Dong

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Because when someone finds a Phallus mushroom - a species that boasts 27 members - in a place called Lam Dong - you just have to sit up and take notice: Phallus Mushroom Found in Lam Dong Vietnam  on National Geographic. Silliness aside, it was really fun to communicate with one of the Vietnamese scientists involved in the study, pretty cool to get to talk to people half way around the world, and I got a new appreciation for the work of a photo editor on this piece, having to track the pic down. There are links in the story to    Bidoup Núi Ba  park in Vietnam where the species was found, a beautiful looking place, certainly worth a click, maybe one day even a visit (fate and the Florida lottery willing). 

Viking "grave goods" - what do we want to take to the hereafter

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Whether you believe in a world beyond this one or not the way other people feel about it is certainly intriguing. What is so important to you in this life - besides other people, obviously - that you would want to take it to the beyond? Some cultures did take other people with them and you can read one  one study of Viking 'grave goods'  says about the possibility that their other-worldly carry-on bags may have included their servants, plus some of the other curious things people have wanted to take with them when they go. In my last post I wrote about what a joy it turns out to be to talk to scientists and I have to say that definitely goes for the conservation I had with Anders Winroth, the Viking expert from Yale I spoke to about this piece - fascinating stories and thoughts on this most intriguing subject. Click here to check out the story: Toilets, Headless Bodies and Other Weird Things People Get Buried With on National Geographic.

Mysterious Bush Dogs to Be Bred

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One thing I've learned in getting to work as a freelance blogger for NatGeo: Scientists are fun to talk to. Seriously. When I started I was very intimated and worried that having talk to scientists was going to be intimidating, that I would be able to feel the absence of all the brain cells I've killed with cocktails and junk TV, that they would make the empty spaces in my head obvious, like when breath howls through a conch shell. Nothing could be further from the truth. People who are enthusiastic and joyful about their jobs are always fun to talk to and scientists love to talk about their jobs. One of the most animated was Karen DeMatteo, a NatGeo grantee and biologist at the Washington State University in St. Louis and the St. Louis Zoo WildCare Institute. And no wonder - part of her job is working with Train, a "conservation dog," whose job it to sniff out the elusive bush dog, an animal so good at not being seen by humans that most people you ask won't

Nature's real life zombies

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It took awhile to pull this piece together but once you read it you'll wonder if just about every bit of behavior your see in the world isn't driven by parasites. I was amazed to read about Toxoplasma gondii  (it's in the story) and it's ability to control mouse behavior. Studying one puppet master lead to another soon I'd found far too many stories for comfort about animals infected by parasites who end up doing their bidding. It was the perfect Halloween piece and I'm so grateful Carl Zimmer of NatGeo for writing about this little guy (below) known as The Tongue Biter, the little isopod who lives in a fishes' mouth. Paging Stephen King.... You just have to read it: Nature's Walking Dead: Real Life Zombies . Ew. I mean, cool! I mean ew....

Did snakes help us evolve good vision?

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Why can primates see so well? Why did you jump back - even just a bit - when you saw this picture? The answers might be the same - scientists look at the primate brain's reaction to snakes (even primates who never see them) and how being able to see a venomous snake in the wild might have helped primate vision:  The Monkey and the Snake: How the Primate Brain Reacts to Serpents  one of my blog posts on National Geographic.

You otter know....

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Giant River Otters went a little nuts on Reddit last week - find out 7 surprising facts about these super-sized cuties on National Geographic .

Don't Bug Me! Creepy crawlies wrecking transportation

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Toyota had to recall hundreds of thousands of cars recently due to a spider building nests in ventilation tubes. I found some other insect-related wrecks and recalls here on Bugs and Spiders that have Wreaked Havoc on Transportation , one of my latest pieces on NatGeo.

The Heat is On: Winners and Losers in Climate Change

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How is it that one penguin species will lose out as things warm up while another will be a winner? Check out The Heat Is On: Which Animals Will Win Or Lose in Climate Change , one of my latest pieces on National Geographic.